Beneficiaries are actors too.pdf - Southern Institute of Peace ...

abunzi mediators lack access to legal and mediation training.
Most of the training in mediation and substantive law for the
abunzi is often voluntarily conducted by organizations such as
RCN Justice and Democratie, Access to Justice Centres, the
National Unity and Reconciliation Commission (NURC) as well as
the Ministry of Justice. However, the ratio of attorney-abunzi at
AJC is 1:1 000 which is hardly adequate or effective. Support
from government is equally stunted. A study conducted by the
USAID to assess local resolution of land disputes in the
Kabushinge and Nyamugali cells concludes that the abunzi do
not receive support on basic necessities such as cellular phones,
airtime and even transportation costs. The same issue was
revealed during the interviews conducted by the author in
Gacuriro wherein the abunzi mediators verified that they use
their own personal funds to travel to meetings and hearings.
Unlike their counterparts in the gacaca courts, the
inyangamugayo who received support with costs such as
transportation, stationery, cellular phone airtime and school fees
for their children, the abunzi mediator is essentially a volunteer
to the core. However, recently, the government, through the
Ministry of Justice has begun to pay health insurance for the
abunzi members which is pegged at 5 000 francs a year. In
addition, the ministry provides one bicycle at every cell to be used
by abunzi mediators in the dispensation of their duties. Abunzi
mediators could also benefit from interacting and networking
with others from other villages and districts so that they can
discuss best practices and enhance their mediation skills and
decisions.
The challenge of legalized and state mandated mediation
Although the abunzi existed in pre-colonial Rwanda, the abunzi
institution in its current form is a somewhat adulterated version
in the sense that it is top-down mediation. Abunzi like its
counterpart, the gacaca courts, is what Hobsbawn and Ranger
(1983) would describe as a 'reinvention of tradition for particular
uses in the present'. Thomson and Nagy (2010) posit that the
general assumption about community-led conflict resolution
process is that citizens are willing participants when the reality
however is that such processes are controlled by the government.
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